Charley's War Vol. 1: Boy Soldier: The Definitive Collection: Volume 1

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We see, for example, the upper class, promotion-refusing stretcher bearer character of Jack relating some hard-hitting political views about the nature of profiteering in the war. Charley cannot bring himself to put the dying Scholar out of his agony but the deed is performed by newcomer Skin. A British army horse that Charley, who grew up working with horses, saves the life of in 1916 and encounters several times during the rest of the war, the two sharing a certain bond.

Charley intervenes and he and Grogan eventually fight but the latter is accidentally killed when a discarded shell he picked up to throw at Charley turns out to be live and explodes in his hand. Charley joins the British Army during World War I at the age of 16, having lied about his age and told the recruiting officers that he was 18 (they conveniently overlook the fact that Charley gives his date of birth on his application form as 1900), and is quickly thrust into the Battle of the Somme. Charley rallies a rag-tag group of stragglers and looters to mount a last-ditch defence of the town of Albert. Snell murders an African-American Doughboy named 'Pig-Iron' that Charley has befriended and then later kills a British officer who witnessed the earlier crime.Pat Mills seems to drive the point home time and time again, making the usual enemies of war comics become almost allied (British and Germans) and fingers the real enemy as the ruling classes who treated the war as some kind of sport. But, in the meantime, before I relate how it all began and why it all began and what happened after it ended, it’s still worth celebrating Charley’s War as the only anti-war comic book to have slipped under the wire and achieved its objective.

As we’ve seen, the futility of a War promoted by the ruling classes was the main message running through Charley’s War. Frequently we see that the real victims of those vicious characters (often upper class officers) are first and foremost those they command. Brown tells Charley about conscientious objectors being tied to stakes to be used as target practice by the Germans.His platoon is commanded by Lt Thomas and Sgt 'Ole Bill' Tozer and private Ginger Jones becomes Charley's best mate. Also includes a feature on the development of the first tanks and a commentary on the strips from creator Pat Mills, and an afterword by acclaimed comics creator Garth Ennis. His “Secret History” account of the series creation features as part of his ongoing subscription-based Iconoblastnewsletter, the first two chapters available as free-to-read introductions, here and here. Having said all that, the observations below are simply my personal opinion and they could be totally wrong! Morgan is a tough, hard-bitten pilot who has no tolerance for shirkers nor for the chivalrous pretensions of his fellow officers.

Believe me, there are rooms in Meaux which, without showing anything graphic, you dare not linger in because you will not be able to hold back your tears. I had no idea at the time of writing just how terrible the occupation was and that’s something I’d like to have added to my account of Charley and his fellow Tommies fighting the Bolsheviks. I kick off with an introduction that I’ve split into two halves, as it’s too long for some inboxes and I didn’t want it to end up in your Spam. From looking through the books in the British Library in 2014, it was clear they were only promoting the State’s revisionist view of the conflict and excluding any book that challenged it. But it doesn’t really matter which side of the political fence you are on when it comes to Charley’s War.The strip followed Charley through to the end of the war and through into the invasion of Russia in 1919. Censorship in Britain is subtle but widespread and usually involves plausible deniability that it even exists. Charley was hugely popular with its young readers; the number one story in the comic almost for its entire run. I can’t see Captain Snell or those officers who produced the Wipers Times enjoying ragtime, can you?